Look closely at the cast of the movie. Does it attract you? Call you to the theatres? Yes! Victim no 1 is none other than me. And now I am looking for Hriday Shetty with pain in my heart and questions in my head. How can you get away with committing such a crime? How can you cast Naseeruddin Shah, Kay Kay Menon and Atul Kulkarni in an excuse for a film?

Moving on to the story, a professor turned wife-murderer turned driver (Naseeruddin Shah), a pimp (Atul Kulkarni), a drug peddler (Ravi Kishan ) and a car thief (Kay Kay Menon) hatch a plan to steal money from a gang that supplies fake currency notes. They dress up as cops, steal a police van and are headed to Kalyan for the big night when a real cop stops them. The second half is as the song suggests, ‘a crazy night, a hell of a ride.’

The script that looks good on paper turns into a disaster on screen. At certain points it reminds you of ‘Ek Chalis Ki Last Local’ but the direction isn’t as crisp and edgy. The flashbacks are craftily created to throw item numbers at an unsuspecting audience. The first one hits you within 10 minutes in to the movie and by the time the third one arrives you’ve already sunken low in your seats. However, there are some funny lines in between and for the rest of the film you are laughing because it does not make any sense at all. The climax does remind you of the crazy laugh riot ‘Pineapple Express’ only that it’s badly done. The leading men walking in slow motion like ‘Reservoir Dogs’ has been repeated till you finally scream, “Move it faster, dude!”

The director/producer tried creating a buzz by getting the 90s Pakistani popstar Hassan Jahangir to sing his then hit ‘Hawa Hawa’. My one suggestion to such creative geniuses; please let that music stay in that era. It’s good the way it is, don’t kill its essence with those stupid remixes.

Coming to the cast; the director managed to get the cream of the industry but as they say, wild cats don’t work in packs and these actors definitely are the tigers. We’d rather watch them separately in different movies than all of them getting together and making a mockery of themselves. While we loved Naseer Sir spoofing the 80s heroes in ‘Ooh la la’ (The Dirty Picture) we definitely didn’t like the site of him gyrating hips on a ‘Munni’ like number. Kay Kay plays the street smart car thief with as much ease as he plays a cop or a military person. Atul Kulkarni looks odd in funky t-shirts and dyed hair and the discomfort reflects in the performance as well. Ravi Kishan is decent and flexes his muscle too many times probably to shift focus from his jiggling belly.

To sum it up, Chalis Chaurasi is a bad product packaged well. I recommend you watch The Dirty Picture, Gulaal and Natarang back to back if the star cast of this movie lures you.

I haven’t realy understood their (Abbas-Mustan’s) motivation behind making this movie or any other as for that matter. Let’s get into the whole process;

The Burmawala Bros. have money and they have no idea what to do with it. So, they plan to make a movie. Story is not their concern at all since their are many, piled up in a video library. They take out their check list which goes like:

Story from a Hollywood action thriller – Check

Innumerable twists – Check

Macho hero – Check

A side hero who’ll die – Check

Bipasha Basu’s hot number – Check

A love triangle or sometimes quadrangle – Check

Inane dialogues – Check

Pritam’s music – Check

A car chase – Check

A not so slick desi style dhishoom-dhishoom – Check

Johny Lever – Check

White clothes – Check

Going by these ingredients Players is a perfect film. It insults your intellect to the point that you are left with no other option but to enjoy it. The story goes like this; Charlie a CA who also is a smooth criminal steals necklaces from big stores and talks about the robberies in a most profound manner. He plans to steal the gold that’s been taken to Romania from Russia in a train. He gets a team of the best players with the help of his guru Victor Dada (an old and tired Vinod Khanna). So Charlie gets a Bipasha; a motor expert who can seduce the living hell out of any thing that moves, Sikander Kher; a bomb expert who is deaf, Omi Vaidya; a prosthetic expert with the weird 3 Idiots’ accent and Bobby Deol; an illusionist with broody expressions. The only player that’s left is the ‘best hacker of the world’ Spider (Neil Nitin Mukesh) whom no one can trace. Well, not really cos he is traced by Sonam Kapoor who incidentally is Victor’s daughter and an ethical hacker. They execute the robbery and are double crossed by Neil who tries to kill them all. Post interval the rest of them form a team against Spidey and take the revenge.

Now, logic doesn’t play much role here. A robbery timed for 10 minutes time stretches itself to 15 good minutes. The Russian general is seduced by Bipasha and dances on ‘mera joota hai japani’ with his pants off. Strangely he doesn’t find anything odd the next day when he wakes up from his unconsciousness. The most absurd part comes where Johny Lever, a car mechanic creates cars from the stolen gold within half an hour. If only Tata could hire a guy like that their production will increase 10 folds.

Acting department completely relies on Neil’s shoulders and he impresses with his mean act. He has a potential to fill the void in Hindi films created after villians like Amrish Puri and Gulshan Grover. Abhishek Bachchan looks…well…ugly. While Bipasha looks hot even in drabs, Sonam Kapoor tries hard to match up with her. Her seduction dance for Neil Nitin looks more of a mockery.

The film is an insult even to the masala genre. If you still want to watch it I recommend you go with cynics who would laugh at every scene and make you forget that its an ‘action thriller’.